BB Cream for Dry and Sensitive Skin

Eight in the morning, your base looks great. By lunchtime it's gone patchy across your cheeks and made itself at home in every line you own. Cheers for that.

A base you wore happily for ten years can turn on you somewhere in your thirties/forties. Your face is fine. It's the base that's stopped suiting you, and swapping a base is easy. For dry skin, the best swap is often a BB cream.

Two things that make dry skin look drier

A base that needs layering to look even is the main culprit. If you're going over the same patch three times to get it to match the rest of your face. That product has to go somewhere — on dry skin, it settles straight into the texture.

Powder is the other one. Put powder over a dry patch and it'll show you exactly where the dry patch is. Like it's proud of itself.

Why BB cream tends to suit dry skin

Foundation is designed to cover up. It does that by parking pigment on the surface of your face and then expecting the pigment to stay put. That's where the wheels come off on dry skin, because the pigment's got nothing to sink into. So rather than settling in nicely, it sits on top as a powdery mess and goes looking for every flaky patch you own.

And it finds them. It always finds them.

Foundation normally also needs a primer, a concealer, a setting powder and something to blend it all with. BB cream does pretty well all by itself, so there's less on your face and fewer suspects when something upsets your skin. (It's also why it's the one that survives the cut when you're packing for a trip.)

BB cream is lighter and more hydrating. It's really closer to a tinted moisturiser than to a base. You end up evened out rather than covered, and most days that's the main job you need done.

On dry skin	BB Cream	Foundation
Hydrating ingredients in the formula	✓	✗
Works on its own, no primer or powder needed	✓	✗
Stays out of dry patches and fine lines	✓	✗
Buildable where you want a bit more	✓	✓
Designed for heavier coverage	✗	✓

Generalising, obviously. Formulas vary, which is what the ingredients list is for.

How to put BB cream on when your skin's dry

Putting a BB cream on doesn't need a new routine. Nothing extra to learn, nothing new to buy, no seventy-step anything.

A couple of things help if your skin's dry, though. If you use anything before it, give that a minute to settle, because base over anything still damp will slide straight back off.

Warm the product between your fingers as you blend (your hands are warmer than any brush you own). It takes about thirty seconds and it's very hard to get wrong.

The full step by step is over in How to Apply BB Cream for a Natural Look, and if you want the wider version of all this, there's what BB cream actually is and choosing a BB cream for mature skin.

What to look for on the label

Hyaluronic acid is the ingredient worth learning by name. It holds water in the skin, so your base has something to sit on instead of gripping the dry bits for dear life. Glycerin and squalane do much the same job, and coconut oil, sunflower oil and vitamin E handle the softening. Between them is what stops it looking flat and chalky by three.

After that, you want buildable rather than full coverage, so you can put more where you actually want it and leave the rest of your face out of it. And if your skin reacts to things, look for a short ingredients list. The more that's packed into a formula, the more things there are that could trigger a reaction — and the harder it is to work out which one did it.

Then the boring checks, which are at least the easy ones: no parabens and no added fragrance (ours ticks both, in case you asked).

What you get with Excellent BB Cream

Excellent BB Cream is our everyday base, and it doesn't ask much of you. Buildable if you want more, perfectly happy if you don't. It wears like the last step of your skincare that happens to have a tint to it.

No parabens, no added fragrance, made here in Australia, nine shades (the shade finder gets you closer than squinting at nine swatches the size of a five cent coin on your phone screen, and it takes about a minute).

On reactive skin, everything above still stands. Some people get on with it, some don't, and that's true of every base ever made, ours included. Arm first.

Sensitive skin is personal, so patch test first

Sensitive skin isn't one thing. Two people can both call their skin sensitive and be reacting to completely different ingredients, which means nobody can promise you a product will suit you.

There are the usual suspects. Added fragrance is the big one and essential oils are close behind. Ours has no fragrance and no essential oils anywhere on the ingredients list.

None of that tells you how your own skin will take it. So here's how to find out, before you've committed a whole face and a whole day to it.

1. A small amount, somewhere discreet. Inside of your forearm, or just under your jaw. Not the middle of your face.
2. Then leave it alone. Don't wash it off, don't put anything over the top.
3. Check at 4 hours, then again at 6. You're looking for redness, itching, small bumps, or a sting that won't settle.
4. Still clear? Try it on one small section of your face for a day before you commit properly.

The waiting is the bit everyone skips and the bit that actually matters. Plenty of reactions take their time. Something can feel completely fine going on, and the reaction arrives after a few hours.

And if your skin does react to something and it won't settle down, that's well past what a makeup brand should be weighing in on. Please visit your GP or a health care professional for advice on your current situation.